Resurrection
by sakorian rage
Summary: Bob was dead. Johnny was dead. And now, Cherry thought as she looked at this boy who once had ice in his eyes and fire in his heart, Dallas Winston was as good as dead. But she would resurrect him. She would put the pieces back together. It was the least she could do. Because she had already fallen, and she had fallen hard.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello, all! I haven't been on this site for a while, but I'm hoping to get some fanfics up. I thought I'd start off with some Dally/Cherry. I absolutely _adore_ that pairing, so I hope I don't completely botch it ****– I've never written romance before, you see, but you'll give it a shot, won't you? **

**Reviews are appreciated! There's no better motivation than knowing someone is reading your story.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own _The Outsiders_.**

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He wasn't crying – she suspected he had forgotten how a long time ago – but his face was drawn tighter than a bowstring with more emotion than he had probably showed in his entire life. The towheaded boy – and it was startlingly easy to see that he was just a boy, now that his face was not so closed off to the world – was slouching against the wall. Even if she had been planning to, which she hadn't, she didn't need to pay a visit to the hospital to know that the inevitable had finally happened. He had just lost the only one he had dared to let himself love, and the pain, she saw in every difference between what she saw and what she knew of him, was unbearable.

It would take a lot to convince him to open his heart to another person. Then she gave herself a reality check. What was she thinking? That he could ever see her as more than the broad who'd blown him off the night they'd met? She remembered it clearly, remembered the tickle of his hot breath against the nape of her neck and how difficult it had been not to fall for his rough charm. Marcia had enjoyed the movie but all she had been able to think of was the memory of his touch. He was the last person she could let herself fall in love with, no matter how much faster she felt her heart beat at the sight of him. It was a simple crush, she told herself. The attraction was purely physical.

But how could she help it? Much to her horror, she found that the same things that she had seen in Bob were also in this young man. Both were reckless, wild, and utterly untamable. No one told them what to do, and they never took no for an answer because although they had different ways of doing it, they always got their way. They looked for something and they did not know anything about it beyond the fact that it was more than this world had to offer, but they looked and looked and looked anyway and it would be their downfall. They thought they could defeat the world singlehandedly – something that was always bound to end in failure, but she was cursed with falling for doomed boys. And she found herself drawn toward them, helpless to the irresistible tug at her heart that reeled her in like a fish. It was why she had said to Ponyboy that she would fall in love with the blonde boy if she ever saw him again.

But as she looked at Dallas Winston, Cherry Valance knew that this was not the person she had fallen for. She had never seen a sadder sight, for the boy had dissolved into the very thing he had vowed he would never be, had finally fallen apart. And what was left was not pretty.

She shouldn't have been surprised; all the pent-up emotion that must have built up over the years never seemed to affect him like it did any normal person but must have been eating away at him from the inside all along. It was somewhat of a revelation that Dally felt anything, yet she felt that she had expected it anyway.

He stared straight ahead, unseeing, and didn't give so much as a twitch to show he even sensed her presence. It said more than any amount of words ever could have expressed, that he no longer cared what happened to him. His criminal record had ensured that he had gotten his fair share of time in jail, and it was there he had learned that if he wanted to last out on the unforgiving streets of Tulsa, he could not afford to look out for anyone but himself. And the exception he had made had been killed doing exactly what Dally had known would get him killed, would get them all killed.

Bob was dead. Johnny was dead. And now, thought Cherry, Dally Winston was dead. The ice in his eyes had finally chipped and cracked and melted, and through the pools of water that they had left behind, she knew she would see a sorry heap of ashes where the fire in his heart had once burned and blazed so furiously. Yes, he was as good as dead, because he would be jumped by some Socs before the end of the day if she left him like this. She thought of how the greasers would react, and when she pictured the heartbreak in their eyes that was to come at another death of one of theirs, this one preventable, she knew she owed it to them. It was the least she could do.

"Dally?" she said softly.

No response. Then again, why should he respond to the soft-spoken words of a Soc he barely knew? Knowing this, the logical course of action would be to do something so flashy and startling he had no choice but to look up and acknowledge her, but with Dally, it was never clear. To impress the prison-hardened hood, she had to find the perfect balance between subtle and shocking, an incredible feat within itself, and quite frankly, Cherry was in no mood to play games.

"Listen up," she snapped, "because I'm only going to say this once."

He didn't even blink. Apparently she wasn't worth recognizing. A blend of pique and inexplicable pain welled up inside her chest. She opened her mouth in fury, rage hindering her train of thought so it took longer than it should have to get the spiteful words out.

"You're just going to stand there, aren't you?" she spat. "Well, I've got news for you, Dally Winston: the world doesn't revolve around you. You think you don't care, but you do. And so does the gang."

She waited, panting at her own outburst, for a reaction. For a moment she thought she'd succeeded in her goal when Dally moved, but he just lit a cigarette. As far as he was concerned, she wasn't even there, and suddenly she wanted nothing more than to make him _see_ her, to really see she was not just another stubborn girl that would simply be a little more of a challenge to woo than the other broads before he could discard her. But the sad part was, he had already succeeded. Cherry had fallen, and she had fallen hard, but all that was forgotten in the face of her indignity.

"I know what you're planning to do," she continued, making it up on the fly. "You lost him, and you're weak enough to think life's not worth it anymore. Guess what? All of us have lost something. Do you think your gang's not feeling it, too? They're a heck of a lot stronger than you are, that's for sure. And you know Johnny wouldn't have wanted you–"

Suddenly Cherry found herself pinned against the wall, and Dally was staring deep into her eyes with an intensity that made her shiver all over. Her breath hitched in her throat, and she should have been terrified, but all she could feel was the dull triumph at striking home and the sparks that seemed to fly from their contact.

"Don't say his name," the boy said in a dangerously low voice, "and don't you dare call me weak." The raw agony beneath it made it worse than if he had spoken coldly, the way she was used to. It would almost have been a comfort if everything was the same as it had been that night. But Dally had changed. They had all changed.

Ignoring the painful thudding of her heart, Cherry licked her lips and managed to form a response. "If you're not, then why are you here? Why aren't you with Ponyboy and the others? You're not the only one who's suffering." Bob's roguish grin flashed in front of her eyes, but instead of a pang she found herself brought back to the Nightly Double. The boys were _so_ similar. It hurt her heart.

Dally stepped back, an ugly snarl twisting his features. "You think you know everything, don't you?" he said, scrutinizing her so closely she shifted uncomfortably. The coldness was back, and she wasn't sure if she preferred it over the openness or not.

He shook his head. "I've seen more than you ever will, Cherry. And I've done things that you couldn't even handle seeing. So next time you accuse me of being weak, take a look at yourself."

With that, he slouched off to his car, leaving Cherry leaning against the wall, breathless and barely registering that she'd somehow managed to convince him not to do anything stupid. And perhaps she should be dwelling on what he meant by what he'd said, but she kept coming back to the way he'd said her name and how funny and tingly and warm she felt that he'd even remembered it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I do not own _The Outsiders_.**

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The funeral was a simple, solemn affair, but the atmosphere was ruined by the rowdy boys who attended. Of course, since the deceased was a sixteen-year-old boy who, up until he'd gotten his face in the papers, had been just another greasy nobody, Cherry shouldn't have expected anything more.

And yet, somehow, she had.

There were no well-dressed mourners who dabbed at their eyes and blew their noses with handkerchiefs as they hugged each other and murmured condolences to each other. The greasers were the only ones who cared enough to show up – if you could even say they were there for any other reason than to make the priest, who eyed them and twitched at the slightest of movements as if he expected them to pull a blade on him at any moment now, squirm under their street-hardened gazes and predatory grins.

Cherry had come clad in a black outfit, woefully sticking out like a sore thumb, and with each passing moment feeling more and more like this was one of the most stupidest, least thought through ideas she'd ever had – and that was including the time when she'd showed up in the vacant lot with her Sting Ray and marched up to Dally and the other hoods, offering to spy for them. She tried to cling to the shadows, but it was futile because the sky hadn't gotten the message that this, the funeral of one who had gone far, far too soon, was supposed to be a sad, gloomy day to match the heavy weight on her heart. The sun, in some perverse sense of humor, was beating merrily down on her back; a mild breeze fluttered through the trees and whispered around the hem of her expensive skirt; a cheerful bird trilled a jaunty tune from somewhere off to the right; and Cherry Valance was absolutely miserable.

Another leer directed her way, another murmur passed between hungry-looking boys. She had no doubt it involved her, just as she had no doubt she didn't want to hear it. She scowled at the ground, clenching her fists so hard she knew she would later find little crescent-moon shaped slivers embedded in her palms, courtesy of her fingernails. The greasers' gazes were tangible, raking up and down her body slowly, deliberately, drawn out to make her uncomfortable.

She wished she could just ignore them or at least muster the courage to send them a cool glare that would send them scurrying away, but she couldn't.

Shifting her legs, she curled in around herself as if it could keep them from dressing her down with their eyes and leaving her feeling more vulnerable than if she had stripped off all her clothes and tap-danced in front of the priest. It had been a mistake to come.

She was on enemy territory; she should have stayed home. Had it really been necessary to come? It would have been so easy to visit Johnny's grave once it was all over and the hoods had gone home, and she would have had all the time in the world to pay her respects.

But try as Cherry might, she couldn't pin the blame of this on anything else but her desire to see Dally again.

So there, she admitted it. The reason she was here and was to check up on Dally, make sure she had actually kept him from going and getting himself killed over his grief, as she ought to have done after he'd gotten into his car and driven away.

It was a simple as that, she told herself, nothing more to it. She most certainly had not chosen to come to the funeral just so she could see him again and get butterflies in her stomach. What a ridiculous notion. She wasn't a lovesick silly young girl trying to convince herself the object of interest harbored a soft spot for her, no matter how many times he brushed her off or gave her the cold shoulder.

Cherry was many things, but _lovesick_ was hardly one of them. She had long since progressed past the point where she denied that she felt any sort of attraction toward wild, dangerous Dally; really, what girl _didn't_ get a little weak in the knees around such a roguish character? It was a crush, she reminded herself for the second time in as many days. The phase would blow over. After all, Dally _was_ strikingly similar to handsome, reckless, rakish, dead Bob. Similar enough that she felt dangerously unhinged around him.

"Cherry?"

She spun around, realizing that she had dutifully slipped into her daydreams while the priest spoke and that the people were beginning to disperse, and had to physically restrain herself from throwing her arms around Ponyboy Curtis, who was a very welcome sight among these boys who smirked and made crude gestures at her as they sauntered past.

"Ponyboy!" she cried, unable to keep the gladness – and relief – out of her voice.

He blinked slowly at her with those gray-green eyes, and Cherry knew just how incongruous the sight of a sharply dressed Soc was among these boys – most of whom would be dead on the streets come ten years. "What are you doing here?"

"I-I needed to say goodbye," she stammered, flailing to hide the fact that she was really here for a certain towheaded boy. "Before they– before they bury him."

And with a start, she realized it was true; Dally, irresistible as he may be, had not been the only thing to draw her in today. Johnny was dead already, but the lowering of the casket into the ground was like shutting the door forever. It was different once she knew he was buried deep in the dirt. It was final, and she was at last forced to acknowledge that she would never see him again. _Ever._

Cherry bit her lip. She really hadn't known the dark, quiet boy she met in the Nightly Double well at all, yet she felt the loss and knew he hadn't deserved to die. Perhaps his father had hit him too much, and perhaps his mother had taken him for granted until she needed a punching bag for her anger, but he'd still had so much to live for. And it had all been taken away in a cruel twist of fate, when whoever pulled the strings of the puppets who called themselves humans decided someone needed to go.

Johnny Cade had died a hero, had gotten himself and Pony and Dally into the news, but what was it all for?

People would read the article for lack of anything better to do and cluck their tongues and shake their heads in sympathy, pitying this boy with too-large eyes in a too-small face and commenting that it wasn't his time to go, not now that he, a hood – and later, that would be all that they remembered of quiet, kicked-puppy Johnny who needed attention but not in this way, never in this way – had finally redeemed himself. Then they'd forget about him the next day, his story lost over breakfast in more idle chatter – weather, sports, what was for dinner.

And those who would remember, those who cared? They would go too, and soon. No one was invincible. Man might fancy that one day he would find a way to cheat death, might struggle toward the moment that happened he had transcended everything that was supposed to be possible, but Cherry knew better. Everybody's life was a countdown, and when the timer reached zero, it is time to go. No mercy. No quarter. There is no way to escape your fate.

Cherry opened her mouth, words lining themselves up to trip out of her mouth as she fumbled to arrange them into something that could voice precisely what she felt about all of this, but Pony was already nodding in understanding.

_Of course he would._ Pony was like her. They watched the same sunsets and they got their heads stuck in the clouds when they watched movies and read books. He had a future, too, just like she did – how could he not, when Darry and Soda had both dropped out to save up for his college tuition? He would grow up and raise a family and have kids who would be Socs because their father had the potential to be that great. With his older brothers sacrificing so much for him, Cherry couldn't help but feel a pang. As an only child, she had grown up wondering from time to time what it was like to have siblings. What you never had, you never felt the loss of, but she was curious anyway. The bond the Curtis brothers shared was something invaluable. They may not have parents and they may be a little short on money, but they had each other and Cherry found herself wishing she had people like them to fill in her life. But she had no right to; she already had parents and money and friends and education. She didn't need anything more. Let Pony, Soda, and Darry have each other; they deserved it after all they'd gone through.

"Is Dally okay?" Cherry blurted out, biting her tongue a second too late; the words were out and she couldn't take them back. She'd been scanning the departing people behind Pony, eyes searching for a flash of white-blonde blindingly bright in this fierce sunlight, to no avail.

Hastily, she tried to explain herself. "I – it's not what you–"

"He's fine," Pony said, watching her curiously. "Why d'you ask?"

"I found him the day Johnny… passed," said Cherry, finding herself unable to state the word "dead" straight out. It was still impossible to slap the label on his face. "He was… upset. I thought he'd do something stupid, so I tried to talk to him, but I think everything I said to him went in one ear and right out the other. I-I should have checked on him earlier, but I guess I didn't have the chance." _More like you wandered around in a daze for the rest of the day, daydreaming about what he said and finding different ways to interpret it,_ she scolded herself. This wasn't good for her. Dally wasn't good for her. She almost laughed at that. When had she not known that hoods like him could only mean trouble?

Pony shrugged. "I saw him earlier today. Looks like at least _some_ of your words stuck." He aimed for a grin, but it fell short.

Cherry didn't even bother to try and return it, knowing she herself would not be able to truly smile until a good while after this whole ordeal boiled over. "Did he come?"

"Nah," he replied, shaking his head. "I don't think he could've handled it anyway. Took it worse than the rest of us. He'll be here later for sure, though," he added with a meaningful look at her.

"Thanks," Cherry murmured, wondering if everybody would be able to see through her this easily if she kept going around with her thoughts printed on her sleeve. That would be the last thing she needed right now.

* * *

She found Dally there the next day, standing with his hands stuffed in his pockets as he stared down at the crudely carved headstone.

He looked up at her approach, eyes flicking over her for a single, heart-pounding moment; then turned his head away, his profile sharp and proud against the light of the dying sun.

"You just don't know when to quit, do you?" he said softly, so quiet Cherry had to strain forward to catch his words. A rough, humorless laugh. "If you're looking for Ponyboy–"

"No," she interrupted, "I was looking for you." She felt a smug creature inside her stretch and purr as he looked up quickly, something passing across his eyes for a fleeting moment before it was gone. She'd finally gotten something unguarded out of him.

"Well, you've got me. What do you want?"

Dally's curtness was not enough to make Cherry stumble this time. "I just wanted to make sure I'd actually succeeded in keeping you from doing something stupid," she said smoothly. "Now I see I have. It's good to know you actually do possess the capability to listen sometimes."

He blinked at her, slowly. "Fancy words for a fancy girl," he said at last. "Guess I shouldn't've expected any less from a Soc." He turned his attention back to Johnny's grave. Cherry waited, but it became evident that he had dismissed her when no other answer came forth from him.

She hovered for a moment, wondering if she should say goodbye, then decided against it and made a silent retreat, hating the effect he had on her. Hating how she clung to his every word and tried to divine a second meaning from them. He was a greaser, a dropout; he communicated with actions, not words. It was foolish to think he would ever attach hidden meanings to what he said. And from his actions, it was crystal clear that he would never think of her in even remotely the same way she thought of him.

Cherry entered her car, slamming the door shut. She wasn't desperate. She would get over this.

As she pulled away from the cemetery, she vowed that she would start distancing herself from Dally Winston the next time she saw him.

Because as much as she wanted to deny it, she couldn't help but allow herself a few more days to nurse her little fantasies before she finally let go of them – and him – altogether.

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**So this is a bit of a filler chapter, I guess. I didn't mean for it to turn out that way, but it did, and I'm sorry if I bored you to death. I'm glad that I've attracted a small amount of interest, and I certainly hope to increase the amount of followers I have.**

**Next chapter will be a _lot_ more interesting, I promise. And if you can spare the time, drop off a review. They're great motivation. :)**


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